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Tritartemorion
| Issuer | Massalia |
|---|---|
| Year | 480 BC - 470 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 0.5 g |
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| Obverse description | A lion depicted in right profile, crouching over and devouring its prey, rendered in archaic Greek style characteristic of early Massalian coinage. The feline predator is shown with its head lowered toward the carcass beneath it, the body compactly arranged to fill the small flan. Surface detail is worn but the essential composition of the predatory scene remains legible despite the diminutive module. No legend or inscription appears in the field, consistent with the earliest issues of the Phocaean colony. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
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| Reverse description | Reverse featuring a series of incuse punches impressed into the flan, a technique characteristic of early archaic Greek coinage production. The punches appear as irregular sunken rectangular or square compartments, typical of the mill-sail or divided incuse square patterns seen on early Massalian fractions. The surface shows the characteristic texture of a hand-struck hammered coin, with no legend, inscription, or figurative design. This incuse treatment served both as a practical striking method and a rudimentary anti-counterfeiting measure. |
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| Additional information |
Massalia — the Greek colony at modern Marseille — was one of the most prolific mint cities of the ancient western Mediterranean, and its fractional silver coinage circulated extensively through trade networks reaching deep into Celtic Gaul. The tritartemorion, worth three-quarters of an obol, served the fine-grained commercial arithmetic of a busy port economy where smaller fractions mattered.
At roughly half a gram, these pieces were struck on tiny flans prone to off-center placement, and fully centered examples are genuinely scarce.